I first read Fearless Change: Patterns for Introducing New Ideas by Mary Lynn Manns and Linda Rising when it first came out many years ago as part of Scrum Toronto book reading club. It has been an important source of ideas that have allowed me to successfully adopt Agile at many companies. This is an essential part of any change agent’s toolkit.

Mihai Iancu has a wonderful mindmap to show the patterns in a visual an approachable manner. Thanks to Mihai for allowing me to share this with you.

Here are some of my favourite patterns:

• Do food – Create a relaxed setting and leverage cultural bonding that happens when people eat together
• Tailor made – Find the right solution for the people you are working with; every situation is unique
• Step by step – Take things one step at a time and build on successes

Please comment on yours.

Someone was asking what tools I use to create the visual notes and mind maps.  Perhaps the most important is to trust myself that whatever I am drawing is OK and will communicate ideas better than plain text.

I use the following supplies from DeSerres art store:

• I like the Manga markers since they have really nice flow and give sense of grace.
• The Staedtler fineline is good for adding lots of details and little pictures.
• You can’t see it here, but the 8.5″ by 11″ sketch pad is perforated so I can tear off the sheets and scan them in.
• I also sometimes use 11″ by 17″ sheets of paper with a Sharpie FinePoint for big picture thinking.

Visual note taking is a handy skill that I learned in a series of webinars: I only saw parts of this one and most of this one.  This is a good thing to do as a team/group activity.

I have some really cool mind maps and visual notes from Agile 2009. These will take a while to get posted since I need to scan them when I’m back home (Still in Chicago to attend Lean training with Mary P) and then some time to upload and comment. There’s an RSS feed for this blog, so stay tuned.

Visual note taking is a handy skill that i learned in a series of webinars: I only saw parts of this one and most of this one.  This is a good thing to do as a team/group activity.

“Crucial Conversations” was my book of the year a few years ago for a good reason.  It helped me with some very difficult conversations at work and at home.

I was reminded of this resource when someone I work with was suggested that this was an area of growth for her.  She was kind of annoyed, and then I reminded her that this is a great skill to develop.  I have been working on this for years and I still can do with more improvement.  So in my estimation, take any chance to develop communication skills since it pays off.  Bigtime.

I am not going to summarize the book here.  Instead you can check out a mind map I made up to summarize:  Crucial Conversations – Summary map – shared on www.biggerplate.com I made the mindmap up to help the team I am working with.  Feel free to share it with yours.  Anyway, a few days later, I had an opportunity to use these techniques on my own crucial conversation and turned a very sticky situation into opportunity.  Not sure if it’s a happy ending yet…

If you are in Toronto/GTA, and interested in improving your communicatino, then you might even want to consider a workshop with Innergize Training on Workplace Conflicts And Handling Sensitive Issues.